Have You Met the Hollywood Superstar Investor?

Looking to pitch your innovative idea to successful high-tech investor (and Hollywood A-list heartthrob) Ashton Kutcher? Don’t bother. If your idea is that good, Kutcher and his partner Guy Oseary, who just happens to be Madonna’s manager, will find you.

As Kutcher explained:

“We take pitches based on references, usually from founders of companies we’re already working with. The best way to get to us is to build something amazing, grow it and then we’ll find you.”

With investments ranging from Skype to Foursquare, Kutcher, in particular, is regarded as the entertainment industry’s superstar investor. In Israel for a GarageGeeks event emceed by Yossi Vardi, the founding investor in Mirabilis and the creator of ICQ (the first instant messaging application), Kutcher and Oseary laid out their investment philosophy of looking for new innovative solutions to help change the world.

Comparing high tech to the film industry, Kutcher said that when deciding whether or not to do a film, he was looking for a story that people could connect to and a director who was truly creative; when looking to invest, he wanted a company with an innovative idea that would bring people together, and founders who knew how to build the technology to solve the problem they were addressing.

A former chemical engineering student, Kutcher is also no slouch when it comes to business. He warned the enthusiastic 1,000-plus audience of wannabe high-tech millionaires not to give away the company during the initial run of seed investments.

“We saw a good idea today. The tech was good, user interface 50-50, founders OK, not great, but they’ve given away 60 percent of the company, before even getting Series A funding. A lot of times, investing is a five-year commitment. If companies have given away 60 percent after one or two years, they won’t have enough company left to hire and incentivize the great engineers and employees who will want to be part of the company.”

But aside from money (and Hollywood stardust) what do Kutcher and Oseary bring to the startups they invest in? According to Kutcher, it’s marketing skills:

“We know how to market ideas.”

And again, referring to his film background, Kutcher compared investing in a company to casting a movie:

“We think of the marketing idea when we invest. And then we think ‘how do we cast it?’ We try to surround the founders with other investors who they might not know.”

And with Kutcher and Oseary having invested in around 60 companies over the past three years, they certainly know a lot of people.

Jeff Barak is the corporate editor at Amdocs and regularly posts on the company's thought-leadership blog Amdocs Voices. Before joining Amdocs in 2008, he worked in print journalism for more than two decades.

There's no doubt that blockchain technology is a powerful tool for the enterprise, but bringing it mainstream has not been without challenges. As VP of Technology at 8base, Andrei is working to make developing a blockchain application accessible to anyone. With better tools, entrepreneurs and developers can work together to quickly and effectively launch applications that integrate smart contracts and blockchain technology. This will ultimately accelerate blockchain adoption on a global scale.

Cryptomage, Inc. is a dynamic hi-tech ICT company offering products and services in the cybersecurity area. We deliver high quality solutions both technologically and conceptually. We have academic roots and hire scientists, cybersecurity experts, software developers and analysts. Our strategy is focused on maintaining the highest skills of our human resources. The Cryptomage team is capable of more than delivering complex solutions; we can improve the whole concept to deliver real added value t...

It cannot be overseen or regulated by any one administrator, like a government or bank. Currently, there is no government regulation on them which also means there is no government safeguards over them. Although many are looking at Bitcoin to put money into, it would be wise to proceed with caution. Regular central banks are watching it and deciding whether or not to make them illegal (Criminalize them) and therefore make them worthless and eliminate them as competition. ICOs (Initial Coin Offer...

DevOpsSUMMIT at CloudEXPO will expand the DevOps community, enable a wide sharing of knowledge, and educate delegates and technology providers alike. Recent research has shown that DevOps dramatically reduces development time, the amount of enterprise IT professionals put out fires, and support time generally. Time spent on infrastructure development is significantly increased, and DevOps practitioners report more software releases and higher quality. Sponsors of DevOpsSUMMIT at CloudEXPO will b...

Today we introduced our New York & Silicon Valley combo sponsorship and exhibit opportunities with unmatched pre and post-show promotion.
At CloudEXPO | DevOpsSUMMIT | DXWorldEXPO NY & CA, Digital Transformation (DX) is a major focus with the introduction of DXWorldEXPO within the program. Successful transformation requires a laser focus on being data-driven and on using all the tools available that enable transformation if they plan to survive over the long term.
A total of 88% of Fortune...

FinTech Is Now Part of the CloudEXPO New York Program. Financial enterprises in New York City, London, Singapore, and other world financial capitals are embracing a new generation of smart, automated FinTech that eliminates many cumbersome, slow, and expensive intermediate processes from their businesses. Accordingly, attendees at the upcoming 22nd CloudEXPO | DXWorldEXPO November 12-13, 2018 in New York City will find fresh new content in two new tracks called: FinTechEXPO New York Blockchain E...

Enterprises are universally struggling to understand where the new tools and methodologies of DevOps fit into their organizations, and are universally making the same mistakes. These mistakes are not unavoidable, and in fact, avoiding them gifts an organization with sustained competitive advantage, just like it did for Japanese Manufacturing Post WWII.

Despite being the market leader, we recognized the need to transform and reinvent our business at Dynatrace, before someone else disrupted the market. Over the course of three years, we changed everything - our technology, our culture and our brand image. In this session we'll discuss how we navigated through our own innovator's dilemma, and share takeaways from our experience that you can apply to your own organization.

Blockchain has numerous revolutionary ambitions, but technology hasn’t evolved enough to make them practical. What is the best use of blockchain technology today? How are asset owners and managers looking at blockchain to transform ownership structures? How will blockchain technology allow global investors to access new markets? What kinds of companies will take advantage of blockchain technology as a more efficient way to raise capital?

This session describes how Professional Services organisations can deliver within Technology-as-a-Service (IaaS) constructs, in private and public enterprise cloud scenarios. See how professional services can be packaged and funded by IaaS cash flows, based upon consumption of technology services. Learn how significant, IT infrastructure transformations can be funded through OPEX spending models with multi-year As-a-Services based contracts. Understand how the automation of repeatable services c...

Since their inception, Total Uptime has been delivering on their promise of unprecedented uptime to major brands as well as Fortune 500 corporations in the United States and around the world. Their Cloud network spans 17 countries and delivers the unique ability to seamlessly route Internet traffic from one site to the next when our customers need us to. It is built on the best SSAE 16 SOC 2 Type 2 and CSAE 3416 Datacenters and boasts an impressive line-up of Network and Transit Provider Redunda...

There's no doubt that blockchain technology is a powerful tool for the enterprise, but bringing it mainstream has not been without challenges. As VP of Technology at 8base, Andrei is working to make developing a blockchain application accessible to anyone. With better tools, entrepreneurs and developers can work together to quickly and effectively launch applications that integrate smart contracts and blockchain technology. This will ultimately accelerate blockchain adoption on a global scale.

Cryptomage, Inc. is a dynamic hi-tech ICT company offering products and services in the cybersecurity area. We deliver high quality solutions both technologically and conceptually. We have academic roots and hire scientists, cybersecurity experts, software developers and analysts. Our strategy is focused on maintaining the highest skills of our human resources. The Cryptomage team is capable of more than delivering complex solutions; we can improve the whole concept to deliver real added value to our customers.

There's no doubt that blockchain technology is a powerful tool for the enterprise, but bringing it mainstream has not been without challenges. As VP of Technology at 8base, Andrei is working to make developing a blockchain application accessible to anyone. With better tools, entrepreneurs and developers can work together to quickly and effectively launch applications that integrate smart contracts...

Cryptomage, Inc. is a dynamic hi-tech ICT company offering products and services in the cybersecurity area. We deliver high quality solutions both technologically and conceptually. We have academic roots and hire scientists, cybersecurity experts, software developers and analysts. Our strategy is focused on maintaining the highest skills of our human resources. The Cryptomage team is capable of mo...

It cannot be overseen or regulated by any one administrator, like a government or bank. Currently, there is no government regulation on them which also means there is no government safeguards over them. Although many are looking at Bitcoin to put money into, it would be wise to proceed with caution. Regular central banks are watching it and deciding whether or not to make them illegal (Criminalize...

DevOpsSUMMIT at CloudEXPO will expand the DevOps community, enable a wide sharing of knowledge, and educate delegates and technology providers alike. Recent research has shown that DevOps dramatically reduces development time, the amount of enterprise IT professionals put out fires, and support time generally. Time spent on infrastructure development is significantly increased, and DevOps practiti...

Today we introduced our New York & Silicon Valley combo sponsorship and exhibit opportunities with unmatched pre and post-show promotion.
At CloudEXPO | DevOpsSUMMIT | DXWorldEXPO NY & CA, Digital Transformation (DX) is a major focus with the introduction of DXWorldEXPO within the program. Successful transformation requires a laser focus on being data-driven and on using all the tools available...

FinTech Is Now Part of the CloudEXPO New York Program. Financial enterprises in New York City, London, Singapore, and other world financial capitals are embracing a new generation of smart, automated FinTech that eliminates many cumbersome, slow, and expensive intermediate processes from their businesses. Accordingly, attendees at the upcoming 22nd CloudEXPO | DXWorldEXPO November 12-13, 2018 in N...

Enterprises are universally struggling to understand where the new tools and methodologies of DevOps fit into their organizations, and are universally making the same mistakes. These mistakes are not unavoidable, and in fact, avoiding them gifts an organization with sustained competitive advantage, just like it did for Japanese Manufacturing Post WWII.

Despite being the market leader, we recognized the need to transform and reinvent our business at Dynatrace, before someone else disrupted the market. Over the course of three years, we changed everything - our technology, our culture and our brand image. In this session we'll discuss how we navigated through our own innovator's dilemma, and share takeaways from our experience that you can apply t...

Cloud computing budgets worldwide are reaching into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and no organization can survive long without some sort of cloud migration strategy. Each month brings new announcements, use cases, and success stories.